Sound Publishing Retrofits its DGM Press with Automation from DCOS

KINNA – Based in Everett (WA) in the northwest pacific region of USA, Sound Publishing plays a major role as the largest community media organization in the state.

The company was founded in 1987 under the name Whidbey Press Newspaper Group and had three publication at that time. Mainly through acquisition the company has grown steadily over the years and today operates almost 50 newspaper titles of its own.

2007 was an important year for Sound Publishing as a new press facility was established and six smaller print shops was consolidated into one central print facility in Everett. An 8 tower, 2 folder DGM press from 2003 was acquired and became the flagship of the operation. The press was well automated with Indramat unit shaftless drive system, AR60 splicers, remote inking and auto-registration.

While the press is in good mechanical condition, the electrical systems has reached it end-of-servicelife and in 2015 Sound publishing decided an upgrade of the drive and control systems would be necessary in the next years.

Larry Babcock, director of Operations at Sound Publishing says; “We have a few things that make our operation unique. First of all we have over 600 start-ups per month, secondly we run a 3-across format on single-wide press which adds some complexity to reach good presetting and efficiency. We were searching to find a vendor not only capable of extending service life of our equipment but who also has solutions to make us more cost and time efficient and who can offer us a one-source partnership for our entire press automation.”

Contact was established between Sound Publishing and DCOS in 2015 and for about one year different solutions with its corresponding ROI calculations was discussed and evaluated. In August 2016 Sound publishing decided to place the order in favor for DCOS.

The project will include a new press control system (partly utilizing existing I/O structure), new control stations, DCOS motion controller to replace Indramat CLC´s, partial drive upgrade, remote inking system integration and upgrade. The installation will start in beginning of January 2017 and will be carried out on a tower-by-tower basis while the press is in normal production.

“It has been a very interesting process to engage in discussions with Larry and his team on this project and we look forward to a long-term partnership with Sound Publishing. Our ideas of making printing more of an automated process will become reality in this project, and I feel we have come up with a very strong solution.

These types of projects-- combining life time extension of press controls and drives with productivity and automation upgrades-- is DCOS strength. Our uniqueness being the only company in the industry who has the capability to handle this type of project within one organization on any press brand.” says Mattias Andersson CEO at DCOS.